1. Field of the Invention
Industry uses many shipping and other types of labels. In the past these labels have generally been printed by specialty label printing companies with an address space left for inserting the name of the addressee. This is done either by typing on the preprinted label or if there are many labels to be made for the same recipients then this is usually done by a stencil printing process. One of the next steps in label development was to have an all stencil printed label but the resultant labels did not favorably compare in aesthetic appearance to the partially preprinted labels. A succeeding stage in label development was to have stencils factory die-cut for those portions that would have been preprinted on earlier labels. This started to approach the quality of preprinted labels. A further step in label development was to employ a silk screen for the printed matter which was to be common to all the labels and then have a replaceable stencil for the other portion. Still more recently, companies, both large and small, have been printing their own labels with machines which as a rule employ rubber mat printing systems. However, this is again all factory pre-cut rubber mats and the users must employ a second means to effect an addressing of the labels they have made. Again, typing or stencil imprinting is usually the means employed to complete the addressing or other marking of the label.
It is the purpose of the present invention to retain the printing quality of the rubber mat type of printing for the repetitive portion of the label and concurrently employ a stencil printing of the changing portion of the label. No one heretofore has in a single operation printed labels or tags or the like with a rubber mat and a stencil.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The early U.S. Pat. Nos. to J. R. Thomas 2,713,304 and 2,866,258 show stencil printing machines primarily designed for label printing by the use of stencils. The French Patent to Picard 830,499 which issued in 1938 shows and describes a stencil which has its upper portion die-cut with indicia it is desired to print repetitively on all stencils while the bottom portion is left uncut so the user may insert by other means, such as a typewriter, that portion of the text which will be changed. The U.S. Pat. No. to Berkland 3,277,819 shows a hand printer in which the upper portion is provided with a silk screen for repeating the repetitious part of a label, such as the shipper's name and address. The lower portion of the Berkland hand stamp is provided with a removable stencil so that different addressees names may be applied thereto by a typewriter of the like.